The Blues & Billie Armstrong 8
INK IN THE BLOOD
Previously in The Blues & Billie Armstrong…
It was no surprise that my father thought of work as the best available grief therapy for his son—hard work will do you good was essentially the cornerstone of his philosophy of life. Grandma Junia brushed her hands, “Well then… that’s that.”
I didn’t know exactly what Hank Timmons did at the Call & Record. I’d only been in the back shop a few times.
My father and Grandma Junia worked in the front part of the building, and I’d always entered by the door on Main Street. But that door was locked on Saturdays, so my instructions were to arrive by the side entrance on the cross street, promptly at 8 a.m. to begin my training as a “printer’s devil.” I had no idea what that meant but my father said many famous—and serious—men had been printer’s devils in their youth, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain.
I considered riding my old Sting-Ray to save time, even though the Call & Record was only a few blocks from our house, but I decided that walking there, as my father often did, was the more mature approach for a young—and serious—working man. I passed the front door on Main and turned the corner down Fifth Street. I walked the length of the building, taking in the magnitude of the thing while carefully missing every seam in the sidewalk.
From the front it had always seemed friendly, though aging—two stories of white stucco with wooden framed windows and doors and fake Spanish tile rimming the roof. But from the side it was stern and gray, stretching back all the way to the middle of the block and leaving the street in cold shadow. Hank’s car, a beautiful fire-engine-red Mustang, was parked at the curb in the morning shade.
The double doors of the side entrance were thick with glossy black paint. I hesitated, thinking I should knock, but one of the doors clamored open while my fist was still in the air, and a voice like rustling paper said, “Come in, young man. The place isn’t haunted, you know.”
Percival J. Terwilliger, owner and publisher of the Lupoyoma Call & Record, was a tower of a man, literally and figuratively. He was quite tall, well over six feet, as tall as Pop but slender, with long legs oddly out of proportion to his torso. He was also a tower of confidence and character, respected by my father—and therefore myself—as much as any man in Lupoyoma.
Even on that warm October Saturday he was dressed in his three-piece suit, with a long-sleeve white shirt, bow-tie, and polished wingtips. He wore glasses with no frames and thick lenses that magnified his dark busy eyes. When he opened the door wider, I saw Hank Timmons nearby in dark blue coveralls, hands behind his back like a soldier standing at ease.
Mr. Terwilliger looked down his long straight nose. “Your father tells me you’re ready to come work for us. You know, he started out as a printer’s devil too. Trained him myself, many years ago, right here in this shop.”
He looked around at his kingdom and took a sighing breath. I looked with wonder at all the hulking machinery covered in snowy paper dust. I breathed in the sweet wet smell of ink and solvent. He put out his hand, and as I shook it he said, “Welcome to the newspaper business, son. Hank here will show you the ropes.”
Hank nodded as if receiving marching orders. I stepped all the way into the building, and Mr. Terwilliger brushed past me on his way out. He paused in the doorway and looked back. “You’ll do fine,” he said. “There’s ink in your blood, you know.”
“Yes sir,” I said, because that was all I knew to say to that man.
But, as soon the door rattled shut, Hank said, “Old man Terwilliger’s a piece of work, heh? Back here we call him Model T. Guy’s a walking-talking antique. Smells like my grandpa’s closet, I swear. And how about that bow-tie? It’s damn near 1970 and he’s stuck in the boring twenties!” He laughed at his own wordplay and slapped me on the back. “Now, let’s get to work, bud. And listen up cuz I don’t want to waste time, ya hear. I’m gonna be stuck on some army base in a month—I should be cruising Main Street in the Mustang right now, chasin' tail, know what I mean?”
He turned and signaled me to follow. We weaved a path around various machines while he chattered on like a ballplayer in the dugout, pointing and calling out the names of the strange equipment. Letterpress, addressograph, bundler and more. Faster than I could process..
We arrived at a door in the wall opposite the entrance, and Hank opened it and waved his hand around in the dark until he found the chain that turned on the lightbulb swinging from the high ceiling. This was my first look at the shop closet, a cramped and shadowy space crowded with a janitorial arsenal: brooms and mops, buckets and dustpans, and a vacuum that looked like a sawed-off oil drum on wheels. On a shelf screwed into one wall, small stacks of the dark blue coveralls like Hank wore, freshly laundered and folded so the name patches showed prominently. Vic, Stan and Hank—strong, one-syllable names.
Tacked or taped to the back of the closet door were dozens of pictures—naked women torn or clipped from Playboy and Penthouse magazines, black-and-white prints of Lupoyoma High cheerleaders in mid-air with their little pleated skirts flying up, and tourist girls in bathing suits on the beach at Library Park. “Nice, huh?” Hank said as my eyes toured the display. He pointed to one woman with large breasts barely contained by a skimpy bikini. “Look at the rack on her,” he elbowed me in the arm and the heat of a blush hit my face.
Hank lifted a grungy, soiled apron off a hook on the wall and held it out to me. The thing had once been white, but now was yellowed and slick with sweat and ancient ink stains.
“Here,” he said, “you’re gonna need this.”
The Blues & Billie Armstrong is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance of the fictional characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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